Being in the right place at the right time can sometimes be a life-saver, as Dublin man Mark Furlong (20) found out this week. Furlong ran to the aid of a family at Gloucester Place in the north inner city after hearing cries for help from a burning house in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
He jumped over the garden wall to respond to Derek Healy’s call for help to save his three-month-old daughter Mila, whom he was holding outside a third-floor window to protect her from smoke and flames.
“He said ‘catch the baby’, so I just dived over the wall and he threw it down to me and I caught it,” Furlong said afterwards. “I just put my arms out like getting a rugby ball. She started smiling at me when she came down. She just started giggling.”
Furlong took his new status as a local hero with great humility. Reporters and photographers traipsed the neighbourhood trying to track him down; he was eventually released from his day’s work in Fás to deal with all the attention.
All six people in the house escaped the fire, including young baby Mila, who will never remember the night of drama.
Healy’s partner, Charlene Murphy, sustained a broken pelvis. Three-year-old Lola and Gary (17), Charlene’s siblings, were both taken to hospital for smoke inhalation but have made a full recovery.